Emotions and Harshness: An Emotional History of Social Movements since 1968

Emotions played a key role in the political language of social movements in German-speaking Western Europe after 1968. Activists both demanded a society that would allow for better emotions, and described their own emotions during moments of revolt at great length. The project firstly seeks to understand the history of this politicization of emotions that began, for the most part, in 1968. How did specific emotions become central to political analyses and demands? How did activists conceive of political problems as emotional problems (they claimed, for example, that society would only produce “negative” feelings such as fear or did not allow for any “genuine” feelings at all), and what kind of solutions did they propose? And finally: How did emotions then disappear from the political vocabulary of protest movements? Secondly, the project focuses on the feeling of a Rausch (a sort of Dionysian moment) participants of the revolt of 1980/81 claimed to have experienced. Compared with the momentous emotions during this Rausch, long-term, lasting changes became less important. In particular, the project will investigate the relation between emotions and power at the moment of collapsing or challenged power structures.